One of those days...

First, let me say that I am just plain exhausted. I have been working very hard to stave off the nasty germs all the kids insist on bringing to school, and so far I have not gotten really sick, but not succumbing to the stuff going around takes about as much out of me sometimes as just being sick and getting it over with.

I was already feeling worn-thin before my day even started today.
It hit me at lunch today that I am tired of being a teacher and should find another job, but before you panic (especially you, Mom, and you, husband), the feeling will probably pass when I get some more sleep. We're starting to plan a master schedule for next year, and the state has said "you need to do something about freshmen" which we already knew; we just got statistics on where our current 9th graders came from: most from a feeder campus, and the next largest group is actually flunkies from last year who didn't have enough credits to get promoted. So the state says "do freshman academies," meaning, have facilities and instructors that just exist to teach freshmen, use teaming strategies to keep kids from falling through the cracks, have smaller classes, etc, etc, but nobody's ponied up with the money or even a working model for schools to go by. It sounds like they need to move 9th grade back to junior high and 6th grade back to elementary school, if you ask me. Trying to implement middle-school best practices for only 1/4 of the students in a high school seems like a too-complicated way to do something that really shouldn't be all that difficult. As a result, of course there's been all kinds of grousing around the lunch table lately, and people are in bad moods, but it just struck me today that I am surrounded by a bunch of people who don't really give a shit about kids, in the middle of a giant system that isn't exactly geared toward helping kids all that much in the first place. Not in a practical sense, at least.

So then I make it back to my room, and there's this really snarky email from a parent saying her kid told her he'd used a homework pass on this one assignment, but the grade report still showed it was a zero, and like demanding an explanation from me. Ok, I understand that first reactionary flare-up of "whose fault is this somebody please explain," but there are like ways of politely stating that idea that don't sound like I am your personal education slave-robot. THEN on the staff bulletin board area of the mail system there's been all this dumb high-school-style drama going on about politics and people's personal soapboxes, and apparently somebody said something negative about cheerleaders' behavior, and somebody went and printed it up for parents, or students, or something, and then there were hordes of bitchy people involved, and it made me think "for 36K a year, I totally don't need all this." Not when I could go to night school and learn to run an ultrasound machine or something, or learn to fix air conditioners or even be a mail-delivery-person.

I'm sure I just have absolutely no perspective whatsoever today, since I've been sleeping badly (waking up, startled, every hour or so) and not feeling so great. It's just been one of those days I want to throw up my hands and yell "whatever. I'm done," you know?